Clojure has a zen-like quality to it. There is extreme focus on simplicity, on defining few elementary orthogonal concepts that can be combined in powerful ways. For example it took 3 years for Clojure to get named parameters – but the result, destructuring, is something much richer and more applicable, that fits the language perfectly and has become a core part of idiomatic Clojure.

Scala feels as if trying to empower the programmer in any possible way, throwing in shortcuts, syntactic sugar, and plenty of methods so that anything can be done with the minimal amount of code. It is overwhelming.

Disclaimer: I have only a few weeks of experience with Scala and are in no position to judge it. This is just an impression I have gained so far and nothing more. I’m sure it is a great language.